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In this tutorial Chris Schmidt will show you how to modeling using splines and extrude some embossed graphics on a card. Combining a variety of modeling, lighting, texturing, and rendering techniques you’ll create a series of subtle effects that when combined create a realistic image.

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This is a friendly community. Please treat everyone with respect. We don't all have to agree, but we do have to be nice. Criticism is fine, but rude comments and name calling will be deleted. Use your real name and don't be spammy. Thanks for adding to the conversation.

Jakev

Robert

I was waiting for this for a long time! I would love to see more tips and tutorials on how to make realistic branding mockups, especially best techniques, to make paper look like paper. I was experimenting with different textures and settings, but never made it realistic enough. Thanks guys.

ProTools//Tommy

ProTools//Tommy

Some words about camera-DOF:
For a realistic result you should have model with real dimensions/proportions!
In fact: your business card is way to large (350 cm)! In real-size the DOF calculates much stronger, because the relationship of f-stop and (beside that) the focal-length!

For a nice blurry macro-shot try a focal-length about 80mm (for a nice close-up-zoom) and a f-stop approximately 2,0.

Chris Schmidt

There you go, showing my lack of camera knowledge. I suppose it makes sense changing the global scale that much would have to compensated somewhere. I still might do it this way, because the procedural noises don’t like to get too tiny. Things can flicker.

letthead

Fun fact – This is actually a foil imprint effect and not ink on those types of cards. It uses a hot die cast to stamp through a foil material that transfers to the card. Silk screened ink would have a similar effect, but the text would be raised over the surface of the card.

I know some of these has been covered a bit previously but something really focussed on making a character walk for example would really be useful. But yeah, it deviates from motion design a little bit i guess
Thanks!

Jim

Thanks for the tutorial Chris, I’m trying to copy the method but with a complex logo created in Illustrator rather than webdings. After importing (merge object) the spline from Illustrator and dropping it into a connect object some of the points become disconnected. Do you know why they would do this, or how to correct it? I’ve inspected the original in Illustrator and everything’s connected.

Mish

Charlie Bognar

Kristjan

Cool tutorial, would work well if you’re designing a card for a company and wanted to show off what the card would look like if it was “real” or what the finished product would look like.

One thing that I will mention is that you don’t really need to type everything out in illustrator to see what the different “*dings” fonts containt.

There’s a whole menu/toolbar/window called “Glyphs”, which is especially good for Web/Wingdings because it shows ALL the characters available if you wanted to see your options – a very specific usage I suppose but there is that.

(As you’re typing into a text layer, you can double-click on the icons there and it will add it to your text)

Joe

Zizos

The F-Stop is not the only way to use DoF.
I personally never owned a DSLR or any other camera that would give me such control over it. But I was always passionate about cameras and I can’t wait they day I’ll be able to afford one. I’ve seen tons of tutorials on cameras just like 3D graphics and what I learned is:

1. Focal Length controls how much area around the focal point is still clear/not blurred.
2. F-Stop controls how heavy the blur effect is wherever it is applied.
3. And last but not least Sensor Size (Film Gate). Well, we all know Focal Length is also how wide/tele the lens is. Sensor Size affects also how wide/tele the “lens” is but instead of the lens, this takes part directly on the Chip that gathers the photons right after the light passes through the lenses.

So you can control the first 2 options and if you manage to make the lens look like wide angle or narrow angle and you don’t want that, then you can tweak the 3rd one to change the “Focal Length”. It’s kinda tricky but it makes sense if you have a subtle idea.

Please correct me if I’m wrong.
I do not encourage you to use it like that unless it is an artistic choice. It’s not the easiest thing to understand how lenses work (I still have trouble picturing it) but it is not that hard to learn what these 3 numbers are doing.

And with all that I’m ending with a render I did quit recently with some bottles in C4D. Just a test, testing how “well” I could model/texture/render some bottles. The lighting is just and HDRI, but I used my camera settings as a real camera and the bottles are accurate as f*** in terms of dimensions in centimeters. Don’t forget you can change with what units C4D works so you can use feet or palms (super joke)

Zizos

Those parameters don’t do ONLY these things. For example Fstop increases/decreases light and so on. But in 3D apps you have the freedom to not care about so many consequences as they don’t affect the renderer unless you SET it to do so.

Also with the standard renderer you don’t even mess with these numbers to affect the DoF, instead these numbers only affect only how wide/tele the lens is.
So you need to go the Detail tab of the Camera and set the “DOF Map Front Blur” and “DOF Map Rear Blur”. If my explanation doesn’t make much sense just right click on any parameter you want to learn and click “Show Help…”… It has images, text and what not. One of the best way to learn although it took me a while to just think of the Help Documentary.

Abdullah Naeem

Hello Nick!
I really appreciate the experience and share your guide. Thank you very much!
have a question about this, how this could be done in cinema 4d its an art work by Justin M. Maller. i was wondering about this
need to have your helphttps://www.behance.net/gallery/Reso-Tangaram/5841483

ITVteacher

Andreas

Hi!
This was actually a tutorial that I was very happy to get through. I work as a graphic designer and do a lot of mock-ups for my design. Something I would really like to see (I would be so happy) is one or a few really good tutorials on how to model (not necessary as it is easy to do), texture and lightning a beer bottle and a beer can so it looks good with condensation and all. I know that ther is two tutorials out there but i don’t think they are good enough and it’s put in a verry dark scene and i think it lokks better with a white background.

References of what im looking for is this two examples. It would have been really cool! Lets rock the beer world, make this tutorial and we can the post a lot of cool beers up here on the site just to see how cool and creative a beer can be

Emmanuel Tosin

Dean

I’m trying this on version 12, and am not having any luck getting the extrude to work properly. It won’t extrude anything unless I click Hierarchical. When I do so it extrudes both objects without subtracting one of them ( the text ). Any tips?

roro

Comment Rules

This is a friendly community. Please treat everyone with respect. We don't all have to agree, but we do have to be nice. Criticism is fine, but rude comments and name calling will be deleted. Use your real name and don't be spammy. Thanks for adding to the conversation.

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